Deleting breaking news tweets as a form of updating breaking news

Hamilton’s major highway – “The 403” – was briefly closed in both directions Tuesday evening when a truck lost it load of steel pipes.

I quickly tweeted the information and kept updating as the situation changed with lanes reopening.

My initial tweet, based entirely on information provided by the OPP’s twitter account @OPP_GTATraffic, stated both directions were closed near the Aberdeen Street exits.

The situation quickly changed and @OPP_GTATraffic reported that some lanes were reopen. I modified (MT) the tweet to include the same hashtags as my initial closure tweet and pushed it out. As more lanes reopened, I did the same.

Native retweets disappear when the original tweet is deleted. I deleted my outdated tweet to stop the spread of now-incorrect information.

In the future, I will delete outdated information during breaking news events to ensure outdated information is not spread. In the event that I publish incorrect information, that error will be noted in a separate tweet with an explanation of my error to follow on my blog.